The Guardians and the Lemon Tree
by Julchen M. Liddell
Summary: Highschool AU. Jack Frost is an ordinary teenager who's discovering strange new powers, and meets other kids at his school in a similar situation. When children start going missing all over town, can Jack and his friends put their powers to good use and save them before it's too late? Written for CottonCandy1234's fanfiction contest.
1. Chapter 1

Once upon a time, in a place known as Burgess, Pennsylvania, a dark force was beginning to stir. The residents (all 32, 392 of them) were blissfully unaware of the chaos coming into being just below the surface of their lovely New England town.

Burgess was, at first glance and probably every glance ever, a perfectly normal town. It had a main street, the neighborhoods were aligned in perfect grids, and the southwest border was lined in a lush, beautiful forest that was the site of many picnics, hikes, and camping trips during the summer. Very kid-friendly, family-friendly, low crime rate...overall, a very good place to live. Nobody in Burgess realized their butts could potentially be served up on a silver platter soon.

Oh wait, dang it. I messed that up. And I thought I was doing so well.

Alright, well, now that I've already screwed myself over, let's get something straight. Hi. I'm the narrator. The person-or entity, being, concept, whatever-telling the story. Normally narrators are pretty neutral and flat when it comes to storytelling, but hey, I guess I'm just special. And let's get another thing straight, I'm just here to tell the story. I'm not a character, or a crappy self-insert, or anything like that. I'm pretty sure I'm a noncorporeal, genderless..._something _that exists solely to tell a story. Once the story's over, I'm in the wind. Sometimes literally; I've had people tear up pages at the end of a story and let them just flutter away. Rude.

But hey, this story isn't about me. I'm just the one telling it. It's a high school story, so what better narrator could you get than an actual high schooler? I'm not actually a high schooler but I will fully admit to having the mental maturity of one, so I count.

Like I said though, this isn't a story about me. No, this is the story of a group of strange five teenagers who would come to call themselves the Guardians and the villain they defeated to become known as such.

The focus here is on one member of the group in particular. Oddly enough, though he becomes pivotal to the survival of the Guardians later on, he was probably the one who wanted to join a group the _least_. He warms up eventually though, so to speak. His name? Jackson Overland Frost. Or just Jack Frost for short. In hindsight, if you name your kid _Jack Frost_, you're just setting the poor boy up for some weird junk later in life.

Right, now that we've got introductions and mysterious foreshadowing over with, let's finally get on with the story that is, in fact, 100% true. Believe me, I'm good at what I do.

* * *

Jackson Overland Frost, or just Jack Frost as stated above, is a normal kid. He's lived in Burgess his entire life, he has two living, healthy, fully-functioning parents and a little sister named Rose Catherine Overland Frost, or just Rosie. At the time this story takes place, he is seventeen years old and a junior at Thaddeus M. Burgess High School. He has average grades but is something of a loner. Doesn't have many friends, that is, not yet. Jack doesn't really mind it though; he has a loving family and is utterly devoted to Rosie, who herself actually does have a lot of friends but just likes him better. The two of them spend most of their free time together despite their seven-year age difference.

Jack is, by all accounts, a nice, well-adjusted teenager who loves his family and winter and art and winter again, interests Rosie shares as well. His life is practically perfect.

And when this story begins, he is drowning at the bottom of a frozen pond.

Long story short, he and Rosie were out ice skating at a little remote pond deep in the Burgess woods. It was their special place and, to their great joy, the ice this winter was finally solid enough to skate on. So they thought, anyway. Basically what happened is, Rosie veered too close to the center of the pond, the ice cracked, and Jack managed to grab a long, hooked stick and pull her away from the danger zone in a very heartwarming, big-brother manner. In doing so (that is, flinging her haphazardly off to some other side of the pond) he unwittingly switched places with her and fell though himself. I don't really need to go into detail about this, do I? You guys can probably fill in the holes there.

So now he's at the bottom. Sunk like a rock, he did. Jack knows how to swim fine, but when you're trapped under several inches of ice after being unexpectedly dropped into like negative-degree water that has a nasty habit of locking your joints and seizing up your muscles, mobility is limited. I guess it also doesn't help that Jack didn't have the sense to take a quick breath when he realized he was falling, so now he's also running out of air.

Now, quick quiz: What does one do in a situation like this?

Answer: Panic.

Which is exactly what Frosty here is doing. Good for him, A+ student.

He flails around a bit, freaking out, and is rapidly losing hope. The minute her brother fell in, Rosie broke herself out of her shellshock and went running off the pond, jumping over the small river feeding into it, through the woods, to Grandmother's ho-ah, her own home to find her parents. The child can run and explain things pretty freakin' fast, apparently, thus in no time at all her father is running back to the pond, right on her heels.

Meanwhile, Jack has resigned himself to death. As he no longer has any breath left in his lungs and he can't move well in such restricting water anyway, he's spending his presumably last few minutes watching his life flash before his eyes.

It's pretty boring, he thinks. Like it was established before, his life was average. Only the really significant moments have any real substance, understandably. Like the day Rosie was born, the day their favorite grandmother died of cancer, the subsequent funeral, things like that. School days, birthdays, most holidays passed in a blur of color and more than a few black spots that can probably be attributed to oxygen deprivation. But sometimes, tiny moments make their way through the haze and into the forefront of his consciousness.

_ "Jack, will you help with my homework?"_

_ "Jack, Stevie Johnson took the cookies from my lunch again!"_

_ "I don't wanna go to Emma's party. She's been mean lately, and it's funner here with you anyway, Jack. Can we rent a movie?"_

_ "Jack, I had a nightmare."_

_ "Hey, hey! Can we go skating today? The pond should be frozen by now!"_

_ "Jack...Jack!"_

Wow, this kid loves her brother.

Jack doesn't want to die. Nobody does, not really. Not when it comes right down to it. And Jack really didn't want to die on a day like this, a day where he and Rosie were supposed to have fun out in the cold weather they both loved so much. It was a snow day, they didn't have school, so they were planning to make the most of it. Skating first, then sledding on the remote hills outside the boundaries of the woods, and just when it was starting to get dark they were going to traipse home through the deep snow, throwing the stuff at each other along the way, until they were finally snuggled up on the sofa in their house sipping hot chocolate and watching Regular Show reruns. That's clearly not going to happen now.

He's starting to slip away. He can feel it, and closes his eyes. He can barely feel something (the Grim Reaper, maybe? Some other divine being?) grab at his collar. Then suddenly he's being pulled upwards and Jack thinks to himself that maybe this really is what dying feels like. He figures he's probably ascending to a higher plane of existence right about now. Maybe this afterlife thing won't be so bad after all, if this is as easy as getting there is. Maybe he can even come to enjoy it.

With that thought in mind, he closes his eyes and lets the darkness take him.

* * *

Jack sees the light at the end of the tunnel. The light at the end tunnel sees him and promptly goes out. He wakes up in the hospital two days later instead.

* * *

Turns out surviving hypothermia and oxygen deprivation kind of sucks. Jack remembers the light at the end of the tunnel and feels cheated.

* * *

Rosie fills him in on the story when she comes to visit. She pushed herself to the limit running as fast as she could to their house, got their father, and rushed back all in under ten minutes. Mr. Overland wasted no time in actually diving in after his son, then dragged Jack back to the surface, performed CPR, then bundled him in his jacket and rushed him to the hospital.

The medics say it's a miracle. They say he shouldn't have been able to survive underwater for as long as he did, and especially not in those temperatures.

With the way he's feeling right now, Jack wonders once again if he wouldn't have preferred dying after all. When he woke up there was an IV poking out of his ribs pumping excess water out of his lungs and he was still drugged out of his mind, thus proceeding to spend a decent amount of time vomiting it all back up. There may have been some strong language mixed in there somewhere, but it was hard to tell through the rancid stench.

And on top of all that, he's got a raging fever, a bad cough, and some really frakking intense chest pain. Pneumonia, he's told. Awesome. And due to the high fever making his body temperature contrast that of his environment, he can't stop shivering. He's told they're chills, and they'll go away when the fever does, however long that will take.

"The doctors wanna keep you for a while," Rosie informs Jack when he whines at her. "They say you're infectious right now and want you to stay in the hospital until the fever goes down a bit, then you can come home. You won't be able to go back to school for a while, though."

She has a big medical book open in her lap. It probably weighs more than she does.

"This sucks," Jack moans as he flops back onto his flat hospital pillows and forces down a hacking cough. It scratches at his throat and his chest aches, but he's under the impression that if he quells down the illness it will just go away. "Ro, make it stooop."

"It's caused by _Streptococcus pneumoniae," _Rosie recites, reading from her book. "Since cold places strain on your body, your immune system was weakened when you came out of the water and that allowed the bacteria to swarm inside you and take over."

Big words from a girl whose feet don't even touch the floor when she sits.

"Does it stay how long I have to stay here?" Jack croaks, wrapping his blanket around his shoulders in an attempt to stifle the shivers. It doesn't work. He can hear his teeth chattering.

"Weeellll," Rosie drawls, tactfully ignoring the annoying sound Jack's making and looking down at the page again. "The disease will stabilize usually in under a week, but it takes two to three more weeks for the symptoms to vanish completely."

"Three _weeks_?!" Jack exclaims, which was a mistake. The cough he was fighting forces its way up his throat and soon enough he's doubling over, choking up sputum and gasping for breath.

Rosie patiently waits until he's done before continuing. It takes a while; pneumonia is some nasty jazz. "Yep, three weeks. Maybe less, but the doctors say you're lucky just to be alive. It makes sense that they would want to keep you long enough to make sure that you really are going to be fine in the long run."

The best thing about his sister, Jack decides, is that even at age ten she's the smartest person he knows. She's able to get over things really quickly, too. Once it became apparent that Jack was indeed alive and expected to live, she put her trauma behind her and immediately began researching his condition. What kind of fifth grader does that? Kid's got nerves of steel.

Rosie doesn't mince words, either. When the Frosts first came to visit after he woke up, she only gave him a brief, gentle hug before whipping out her medical encyclopedia and rattling off the details she thought he might want to know. How long he was unconscious, the condition he was in when they arrived at the hospital, the exact amount of time he was under the water, etc.

Jack appreciated it more than he expected to. Okay, maybe he didn't need to know the chemical formula of the drug cocktail the meds had pumped into him, but it was the thought that counted. Rosie was just trying to help out, putting her brilliance to good use for the betterment of her brother's life.

"I wonder if you'd get any weird powers from your near-death experience. Like Spider-Man, or the Incredible Hulk."

And then there's that.

Jack tells her probably not. She's disappointed.

* * *

Jack remains in the hospital for a week and a half until he's cleared to go home. He's relieved when he gets there, because spending some time at the bottom of a pond and then a much longer amount of time in a cold, sterile facility that likes to drug him makes a kid feel pretty homesick.

When he gets home, his mother makes soup for him every day and basically just coddles him while he lies on the sofa feeling like roadkill, while his father tries to help any way he can. Which isn't much, but Jack appreciates the sentiment.

The fever eventually goes away, but he is still cold. It doesn't bother him as much as it should. Jack supposes he just got used to it.

Rosie brings him all the homework he's missing at school so he can stay caught up, and slowly but surely he begins to feel better and less disease-ridden.

The Spider-Man comic books and Avengers DVD 'casually' left on the living room coffee table do not escape his notice.

* * *

It's another three weeks until he's allowed to go back to school again.

That's about when the weird things start happening.

* * *

** Yo yo, here is my entry for CottonCandy1234's RotG Battle of the Fanfictions! The idea is that you write a story based on the plot bunny she gives you (which in this case is 'public school AU') and whoever has the most reviews at the end wins. I really just entered for fun but I'd still appreciate it if you guys could drop reviews to help me along!**

** Even if I don't win or get any reviews, I'm still having a ball with the narrative style. It's a lot different than what I usually do, and a lot more fun. There used to be a ton of swearing here but then I found out it was against the battle rules and I had to change it all to be kid-friendly. That is against my nature and doing it crushed my soul a little bit, but here you have it. Sigh.**

** Big thanks to my three beta readers McVitie, Boba Addict, and KokoLolo, and to everyone who reads. Till next time!**


	2. Chapter 2

His hair is turning white.

_ What the..._

It's just a little thing Jack notices one morning. He's going back to school next week and so has been practicing waking up early. This works in both his and Rosie's favor because then he can make her breakfast and see her off. He has begun to feel almost completely normal. He's still cold all the time but he's gotten used to it and thus has less of a problem, figuring that hey, if that's his only issue he might as well go back to school. It's not like it's been a _month _or anything.

So he's standing in the bathroom one morning after saying goodbye to his sister, just brushing his teeth, when something catches his eye. He could have passed it off as a trick of the light, but instead he leans forward to examine it. It's a grey hair. Closer inspection reveals he actually has quite a few he somehow did not notice until today. Some are not too far along, closer to his normal shade of brown, while others are nearly white.

Dumbstruck, Jack just wonders when this began to happen rather than how it's actually happening. He decides to leave the 'how' for others to figure out and goes to find his mother.

Erin Frost is in kitchen getting ready to go to work and barely acknowledges her son's presence. Loving and caring though she is, the woman can be fairly absentminded at times. She's rifling through her purse when Jack enters the room.

"Mom," Jack says to her back, "my hair is turning white."

She hums absently. "I'm not sure that's possible, dear."

"I think it is, considering it's happening."

Erin glances at him then, her blue eyes meeting his and not looking at his hair at all. "Are you all right, Jack? Maybe you ought to go back to bed."

He sighs. "Mom. I'm not making this up. I'm seventeen, not a little kid looking for attention. I have grey hairs, you can come over and look for yourself."

She's an open-minded mother, or at least she tries to be. So she does what he suggests and looks at his hair. Erin then panics, thinking the color change is a side-effect of the pnuemonia or maybe Jack got infected with some other kind of disease. Despite his protests that he doesn't think it's another illness and is pretty sure _Streptococcus pneumoniae _doesn't cause teenagers to go grey, she calls in sick to work, hurries him into the car, and together they go to the doctor's office.

The doctor has a few theories, such as hyperthyroidism or the slowing of his 'melanogenetic clock'. He says that when Jack was in the hospital he didn't show any signs of Recklinghausen Disease, so it's probably not a medical condition that's making his hair change color. Jack asks when and why this began to happen and the doctor has no idea.

Long story short and without big words Jack and most people don't understand, he's going prematurely grey.

Jack thinks this is completely unfair, since it's apparently a genetic thing and both his parents have healthy heads of brown hair. He remembers the light at the end of the tunnel and feels cheated.

* * *

Jack makes Rosie promise she won't laugh when she hears the news. She laughs anyway. Jack tells her she's statistically likely to have the same thing happen to her in her teenage years and she immediately stops.

* * *

He declines his mother's offers to let him dye his hair. Jack figures that if it's going to happen, it's going to happen, and denying it won't change anything. He decides to apply that philosophy to every aspect of his life from now on.

However, at the same time, he doesn't really want to go back to school with salt-and-pepper hair. Jack had gotten bullied in elementary school a lot until it finally died down in middle school (he's pretty sure his growth spurt had something to do with this; it's harder to pick on someone who's no longer a scrawny little shrimp) and now in high school he's pretty much left alone, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't get teased for having grey or white hair.

But in the end, he sucks it up and figures that, hey, his hair isn't going to change color all at once. He can survive integrating himself back in school for a few days and become invisible once again so nobody would even notice the change.

* * *

People notice.

Jack wants to die. For real this time. The light at the end of the tunnel has made permanent residence at the back of his mind.

It's the Monday after he discovered his hair was changing color. First thing in the morning he goes into his first period class, Biology, and turns in his veritable mountain of homework before taking his usual seat at the back of the room. His lab partner, the quintessential example of a stereotypical teenage girl—that is, shrill, gossipy, and obsessed with her looks—comes in five minutes late and plops herself next to him, smelling of expensive perfume and something else I can't legally identify in a family-friendly story. (It's drugs, but you didn't hear it from me. _Shhh_.)

It usually takes their teacher a while to get class started, and while Jack's lab partner is a rather vapid, unobservant child, even she can't miss the fact that he's back after a month of absence.

She does a double-take when she notices, her eyes scanning over him in a way that makes him feel rather exposed, and without so much as a word of greeting she says, "I think you've got a lot of dust in your hair."

_Crap_.

"I don't think so," Jack mumbles, but his partner doesn't hear any of it.

"Here, let me," she says, and before he can react her hands are running through his hair making it far messier than it was before.

When the flecks of discolor don't vanish, she frowns. Jack leans away from her uncomfortably.

"What's wrong with your hair?"

"Nothing."

"Is it...grey?"

"No."

"I think it is."

She leans towards him again and Jack wonders briefly how much trouble he would be in if he bolted out the door right now.

"It _is _grey!" his partner says, delighted. "Oh my god, Jack, it looks like your hair's turning grey!"

She starts cackling and a few people turn around to stare at them.

"It's not that funny," Jack scowls, because it's really not, but she continues anyway.

Remember when I said I had the mental maturity of a high schooler? Well, aren't you glad you got stuck with me as the narrator and not someone like...well, her?

Thought so.

* * *

The rest of the day goes a bit better than Biology class did. Thankfully for Jack, not a lot of people know him, and so stare at Miss Vapid with bland indifference when she starts going on about how "Jack Frost is totally turning into an old man!"

Really honey, it's not that funny.

But besides that, the rest of the day passes pretty normally. Jack goes to class, turns in his homework, rinse, repeat. A few people kindly ask if he's feeling better, which he appreciates even if he doesn't know their names any better than they know his.

He's on his way to seventh period when it happens. Jack is staring at the floor as he walks down the hall, and so doesn't notice the person in front of him until they crash into each other and go sprawling onto the tiled floor.

"Oh God! I'm so sorry!"

In his hazy confusion, he dimly registers the voice as belonging to a girl, and when his eyes clear enough he looks up to find himself staring into the biggest pair of amethyst eyes he's ever seen.

"S...Sorry, too." He swallows. "I'm sorry too."

They stand up together and she hands him back the folder he dropped when they collided.

"Thanks."

"You're Jack Frost, right?"

Jack looks at her in surprise. She's incredibly short, probably only around five feet tall, with a swarthy complexion and dark, wavy hair. Her bangs are dyed bright blonde and there are streaks of purple and teal framing her face. He stares at her eyes. It doesn't _look _like she's wearing colored contacts, but that shade of fuschia can't be natural.

She blinks. "Are you alright?"

"Ah...I...is that your natural eye color?"

Brilliant. If nothing else, Jack ought to pride himself on his tact and coherency.

Thankfully, the girl doesn't seem to take offense to the abrupt question and grins instead. She has a dazzling smile. He wonders if those teeth are natural too.

"It is my natural color," she says. "It's a genetic mutation. All the women in my family have it." She speaks with the air of someone who has to explain this all the time. Jack mentally slaps himself.

"A-Anyway," he stammers, trying to change the subject, "how do you know my name? I've never met you."

He's just killing it with the ladies today.

She's not bothered by that either, and sticks her hand out for him to shake with a bright smile. "No, we've never met, you're right. I'm Tooth. I help out in office during my free hour and I've met your sister when she came to get your homework. She mentioned you'd be coming back today so I just put two and two together when I saw you."

The hell kind of name is that? Jack, to his credit, doesn't question it and instead shakes her hand politely. "Oh. That makes sense."

"Yup!" Tooth adjusts her grip on the binders she's holding. "Well, I need to get down to the office now. Nice meeting you!"

She's halfway down the hall when she seems to remember something, and turns around to call after him, "Just so you know, I think you have something in your hair!"

* * *

Jack is in a bad mood when he gets home. He's somehow managed to beat Rosie and unlocks the front door, the house inside empty and slightly too warm. Or maybe it's just him that's too cold. He rubs his arms in an unconscious attempt to make his temperature go back to normal, but he doesn't feel any different in the end and frowns. He'll have to check his exact temperature on the thermometer later. Until then, Jack just cranks down the heating and then runs upstairs to his room, taking the steps two at a time.

He ditches his backpack at the top of the stairs and pulls off his winter jacket, abandoning it in the same place. His mother will be on him later about that, but he doesn't care at the moment. The thing is way too hot. When he makes his way to his room and goes to slam the door, something very odd happens.

His hand sticks to the doorknob.

Jack turns, bewildered, to look down at his hand. His pale fingers are wrapped all the way around and at first glance that doesn't look too unusual. His first thought is that maybe his sister pranked him by putting something sticky on his door, but then he looks closer.

The knob is completely frosted over.

* * *

**A/N:**

** Thank you all so much for the great reception so far! So, a few people asked about the title. Have no fear, this is not going to turn into a lemon/smut story. I can't write it, don't like it, and it's against the contest rules anyway! There is an explanation behind 'The Guardians and the Lemon Tree', but it's a secret and makes sense only to me anyway.**

**Thanks to everyone who favorited, followed, and most of all, reviewed! Remember this story is for a contest, so please keep the reviews coming!**


	3. Chapter 3

This is weird.

This is weirder than miraculously surviving falling in a pond in winter. Weirder than going prematurely grey. Weirder than a chatty girl with purple mutant eyes.

Jack sits on his bed, staring at his hands. He hadn't frosted his door over, had he? But it had appeared normal before he'd touched it, and even though he'd turned down the heating there was no way the house had gotten cold enough to frost things in the thirty seconds it had taken him to get away from the thermostat and up the stairs. But was _he _cold enough to do it?

He hears Rosie enter the house downstairs and call his name. Nobody else but the two of them would be home; their parents won't be home for another three hours, at least. Good. That gives him time to try and figure this crap out without them thinking he's sick again.

"Hey Ro," he calls loudly enough for her to hear him down the stairs, "come in here."

She does, looking curious, and he holds his hands out to her. "Feel these for me."

The little girl gives him an odd look. "Are you okay?"

"Peachy. Just feel my hands."

Rosie's still looking like he's got a screw loose, but she puts her hands over his anyway. After less than a second, she yelps and pulls away. "Jeez! Have you been sticking them in the ice bin or something?!"

Jack stars at her. "Am I...cold?"

"No Jack, you're generating electric shock. _Yes_, you're freezing. Didn't you wear your gloves like Mom told you to this morning? You'll get sick again!"

...Good enough explanation. He can work with this.

"Yep," he grins, forcing out a guilty laugh. "Sorry, little lady. I'll wear them from now on."

"Good." Rosie smiles. "A hat too!"

"Yeah, yeah. Go do your homework."

He doesn't miss seeing the swirl of frost patterns on his sister's hand before she rubs it off. When she leaves his room, she makes no comment on the temperature of his doorknob.

* * *

Not that I know much about this topic or anything, but I think Jack's frosting business is similar to a girl getting her period. I mean to say, once you're aware it's happening, it seems to get worse. It's probably a good thing Frosty here is just freezing things with a touch and not spewing blood out of his fingertips or something. That would be terrifying, and probably a lot more conspicuous and likely to get him arrested.

After Rosie retreats to her own room, he jumps off his bed and goes into the bathroom. After rummaging around for the thermometer, he uncaps it and sticks it in his ear. A few seconds later, the telltale beeping goes off and he looks at the screen.

68 degrees Fahrenheit.

_What._

He barely gets a good look at the number before it frosts over as well and sizzles out.

Jack hurries back to his room and pulls his laptop off the bedside table, booting it up and quickly opening Chrome. He types "average human body temperature" into the search bar, barely touching the keys to avoid wrecking this piece of machinery too. It turns out the average human body temperature, according to Wikipedia, is 98.6 degrees. Wikipedia also says that temperatures below 95 degrees are considered dangerous and life-threatening. He's thirty degrees below that.

"Christ," Jack says, running his hands through his hair. "Christ." A few strands of hair shed onto his palms. They're completely white.

_ "Maybe you'll get weird powers from your near-death experience. Like Spider-Man, or the Incredible Hulk."_

For the love of God. Rosie's gone and cursed him.

* * *

Jack somehow becomes addicted to symphonic metal over the course of the rest of the day. He feels like it _gets _him.

_He will go down, he will drown, drown deeper down_

_ The river wild will take your only child_

_ He will go down, he will drown, drown..._

Maybe a little too well. Jack mutes.

* * *

He needs time to figure things out. He had his emo-emo angst day yesterday and now he needs to get this weird frosting thing under control. Jack convinces his parents that the previous day at school was taxing on his body and he needs to recuperate. Which isn't a lie, if one looks at it a certain way. After his parents go to work and Rosie leaves for school, he proceeds to spend the rest of the morning touching things.

The television remote, a few towels, and Erin's Russian egg collection, among other things, all get frosted. A glass of Kool-Aid is completely frozen solid. Jack makes a popsicle out of it and lays on the couch stress-eating. Jack's cold touch makes sure the massive popsicle doesn't melt, but the whole thing does slide off the stick and land right on his face.

He starts playing metal again.

* * *

Rosie's in her room doing homework when Jack decides to ask her some questions. He knocks on her door quickly and then elbows it open, wanting to avoid any ice-cold awkwardness.

"What's up?" his sister asks, setting aside her math book. Jack leans against her doorframe, trying to look casual. He needs to work on that.

"I just wanna ask something," he says. "You're really into superheroes, right?"

She is. She went as Loki Laufeyson for Halloween when she was eight.

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Wellll," Jack looks up at the ceiling, "Spider-Man, right? And the Hulk."

"Peter Parker and Bruce Banner."

"Right, whatever. Anyway, they both suddenly got powers they didn't expect, didn't they? I'm just asking because you brought it up back when I was in the hospital, and I'm curious. So they got those powers, and were they ready for them?"

Rosie shakes her head. "They both just kind of got them unexpectedly. Accidents, you know."

Jack jumps at the opportunity. "If it was just an accident, how did Bruce and Peter handle the powers once they started to show up?"

The little girl begins to wax poetry about Bruce Banner's life story, how he had to go into hiding for years and avoid people and anger and was a boiling pot of rage for a long time because he couldn't figure out how to control the Hulk, which didn't just "start to show up". It burst out of Banner like a freaking explosion or something, and he had to meditate and do yoga and other things nobody else has the patience for. Then people kept walking on eggshells around him and treated him as less than a human being, because of something out of his control.

Jack doesn't find this story encouraging.

"What about Peter Parker?" he asks with an air of desperation.

"Oh. He got bit by a spider and when things started to happen to him, he accepted them gradually and practiced until he got better at using them. It took a while, but he was able to do it. People gradually started to like him more for it."

This is only slightly better, because Jack's going back to school tomorrow and doesn't have the time to gradually get better at his 'powers', but he latches onto this slightly better story anyway and takes it back to his room with him.

It's nearly midnight when he begins to get the hang of it. He's been practicing in his room for hours, using his walls as guinea pigs. Just one finger at first, to see if he can control the spread of frost, then two or three more, and then putting his whole hand against the surface. The wall he started with is covered in shimmering frost from floor to ceiling, and the wall he's working on now is halfway to that same state when it happens.

Jack puts his hand to it, and no frost comes out.

He goes and makes another popsicle on purpose to celebrate. It falls on his floor. He retires to bed instead.

* * *

I'm going to compare frosting to periods again for a minute, I'm sorry. The analogy just works too well. Fair warning gents, you have my apologies.

You know how the first couple days of a period feel like an unmanageable Niagara Falls bloodbath? And then after that it slows down to something much more bearable and controllable and you're no longer waking up in the middle of the night lying in your own pool of shredded uterus? It's like that with Frosty here, except he's a dude with ice coming out of his hands instead of a hormonal teenage girl. The influx of power, which he supposes it is, is still controllable by the next morning. If he concentrates hard enough he can stop himself from freezing everything he touches, and so he's comfortable enough to go back to school the next morning.

His lab partner in Biology (Jack's not even sure he even knows her name, even though they're already well into second semester at this point) thankfully has gotten a new boyfriend or something and completely ignores him during all of third period. Jack gets his makeup homework yet again, and things generally go well.

When he uses the bathroom during lunch, he notices his hair is greyer than it was the night before. It's progressed quite quickly over the course of the week since that fateful day in the doctor's office, but he doesn't mind it as much anymore. Maybe he wouldn't look too bad with grey hair. However, he frowns and wonders why it's changing so quickly before coming to the conclusion that the frost powers are probably accelerating it somehow. (Well, he's not wrong.)

Come seventh period he almost has the whole frost business out of his mind. But, like a period, just because it's slowed down doesn't mean it's stopped.

"Jack!"

He turns when he hears a familiar voice call his name, and sees Tooth hurrying down the hall towards him. Her arms are full of folders again.

"Oh, hey," he greets.

Tooth flashes him that dazzling smile again. "You weren't here yesterday, I was disappointed."

She was? Weird, considering they spoke for maybe thirty seconds the other day before parting ways. Jack blinks. "You were?"

"Yeah," she shrugs. "You seem nice, so I just wanted to talk to you more."

She sounds genuine. Jack feels himself heat up, just a little bit, and thinks that's strange because he hasn't felt warm for about a month.

"Oh," he replies lamely. Jack, you'll never get a girlfriend at this rate. "Yeah, I was resting up. First day back kind of wore me down, you know?"

Tooth nods sympathetically. "That's right, you were out for a long time. I know how it is, I had mono when I was a freshman and missed the whole beginning of the school year."

"That's rough," Jack grimaces, inwardly marveling at the fact that this is the longest, friendliest interaction that wasn't strictly school-related he's had with another student in years. Tooth is easy to talk to; she keeps the conversation going and doesn't seem to expect much from him.

"Yeah. So hey, would you want to-"

The minute bell rings, cutting her off mid-sentence, and both realize they really need to get to where they're going, Jack to his last class and Tooth to the office. They bid each other goodbye and turn their separate ways, only for Tooth to hurry a bit too fast, promptly trip over nothing, and fall with a comical _Oof_! as her binders scatter everywhere.

Jack rushes to help her up then sets about collecting the binders and all the papers that flew about all over the place. Breathless for some reason, he hands them back to Tooth.

"Thank you," she smiles, a bit out of breath herself. Their eyes lock. Jack suddenly thinks are really big, and the color is prettier than he noticed before.

Is this what anime is like?

Tooth is the one who breaks the eye contact, looking down at their hands with raised eyebrows. They're touching, both holding the same binder Jack had been in the process of handing back to her before they got distracted with each others' appearances.

"Uh...Jack?"

He looks down as well. Frost is spreading from his fingers onto the binder, moving quickly onto Tooth's hands. He raises his eyes back to Tooth, who's staring at him with wide eyes, and does the only logical thing one can do in a situation like this.

He bolts.

* * *

**A/N:**

** The song lyrics during Jack's short-lived emo phase are from a song, Ghost River, by the Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish. God, I love them so much. **

** If FairyFrost does become a thing here, I'll keep it as comedic as possible. Just like everything else. True story, when I first started this story I was really worried about how people would respond to the narrator, but everyone seems to like them! Which is good. I was stressing. **

** Thanks to my betas Boba Addict, KokoLolo, and McVitie, as usual, and to everyone who's been reviewing, favoriting, and following. Keep it up! **


	4. Chapter 4

Tooth, it turns out, can actually run _really _fast. When she catches up to him, completely ignoring the final bell and feeling relieved that they both used the same sparsely-populated and now completely empty hallway, she grabs Jack by the elbow and nearly drags him to the floor.

He notices that she doesn't look freaked or suspicious or anything else like that, but she does have a sort of manic, eager gleam in her eye.

"You just froze my hand to a binder," she says breathlessly.

Jack counters with his brilliant wit and diversionary tactics. "Did not."

Tooth ignores him. "How did you do it?"

"I didn't," Jack whines, now sounding a bit desperate. "Someone just left the door open or something and cold air drafted in."

"We're one the basement floor," Tooth points out, gesturing around them. "There are no doors to outside. No windows, either. Plus, when I pointed it out, you took off running like you were on fire."

Jack shudders at the thought of fire and wonders when he began having a problem with it. Probably yesterday. He mentally shakes himself and turns back to the issue at hand, feeling a bit pathetic. He should be, I mean, good job Jack! You can't keep a secret for more than _twenty-four freaking hours!_

"Come on," he says weakly. "How could I even do that? No human could, your body temperature would have to be way below normal to even generate that kind of cold, and..."

_ Shut up now, Frost!_

Tooth surprises him by suddenly putting a hand to his forehead. She grins triumphantly and declares, "You know, you're absolutely freezing!"

Grabbing both of his hands, she bounces up and down excitedly. Poor Jack is horribly confused and would just really like to get out of this situation.

"I know you did it and you can't convince me otherwise," she says. Then she leans forward lowers her voice, "Jack, are you like me?"

_What_, Jack thinks. Out loud he stammers, "L-Like you? What do you..."

"Weird things are happening to you. Did it start last month? I bet it did, since that's when you stopped coming to school. Your sister just said you were sick but _something _must have happened." Tooth looks up to him, suddenly dead serious. "It's the same for me."

Jack wants to think she's crazy, and tell her so, but it's hard to do that when she hit the nail right on the head. She notices his stunned silence and opens the binder she's holding, pulling out a sheet of paper and a pen and scribbling something out before handing it to him.

"Come to my house later," she says. "I have something to show you."

* * *

"Where are you going?"

"Out. When they get home, tell Mom and Dad I'll call them to check in later."

"Is it a girl?"

"What?"

"Did you get a girlfriend you're going to visit?"

"Rosie, where did that even come from? Where are you getting this?"

"It's totally a girl."

"Shut up and eat your Hot Pocket."

* * *

Tooth's house is big. Massive, actually, and Jack and I both think there's some sort of warning people should give out so they're prepared to enter a giant flipping mansion. There's a gate to get in and a large wall surrounding the property, fencing in the house and the large landscape around it. It probably bursts with flowers and immaculately-trimmed lawns in the summer, but as it's still only early February, the only thing to look at is the vastness of it all.

Jack half expects to be greeted by a butler in full tuxedo getup, but instead the door is opened by a tiny little girl wearing a green and blue dress. She's around six or seven and has Tooth's dark hair, though hers is perfectly straight and pinned back with hummingbird clips. The most noticeable thing about her is her eyes; one is like Tooth's, a bright magenta, and the other is pale blue. It's a striking contrast against her hair and olive skin.

The little girl just stares at him and says nothing.

"Uh...hi," Jack says uncomfortably, wondering if he shouldn't have taken off or skipped out after all. "I'm, um, here to see Tooth? Is she..."

She blinks but doesn't respond and Jack's thinking about turning and running before he hears from inside, "Oh, hey! You came!" A few seconds later, Tooth appears in the doorway.

Jack shuffles his feet. "Yeah, I guess..."

"This is Rashmi," she introduces, patting the child on the head. "She's the youngest of my sisters. Sorry, I didn't expect her to answer the door. She's deaf and doesn't like wearing her hearing aids, I don't even know how she knew someone was ringing the bell."

"It's fine," Jack mumbles as he awkwardly takes off his shoes. "Youngest, huh? How many sisters do you have?"

Inside the house is just as impressive as outside, if not more so. On the wall just inside the entryway there is a sign that says _Welcome to the Hy Loo home_ first in English, then it appears to be repeated underneath in Vietnamese. Jack takes in the arched ceilings, obviously expensive furniture, and chandeliers before deciding he likes his place better. It seems more home-y.

"Three. My two older sisters have moved out, their names are Tania and Tien."

Jack raises his eyebrows and replies, almost against his will, "So your sisters are Tania, Tien, and Rashmi, and you got stuck with _Tooth_?"

"Toothiana, actually." Tooth turns a bit pink. "My dad's from a rich family, but he loves teeth and works as a dentist even though he doesn't need to. Apparently it took him a while to convince my mom to give me my name, but she gave in eventually. She wanted something more traditional, another Hindi name since she came from India when she was a kid, but..." She spreads her arms in a 'but here we are' sort of manner.

There is a long pause.

"Oh," Jack says. This kid is just getting so much interesting dialogue. Then he remembers why he's here and asks, "You said you had something to show me?"

"Ah!" Tooth turns to Rashmi and tells her something in sign language, and the little girl scampers off somewhere else. Looking back to Jack, she gestures for him to follow her and leads him up the stairs. In the second floor hallway, their footsteps are muffled by a thick Oriental rug and the walk seems to take an impossibly long time before she finally opens a door at the end and steps inside.

Tooth's room, because it could hardly be anything else, is one half Asian decoration and one half dentist geekery. Clearly Dr. Hy Loo isn't the only one in the family with a love of teeth. Mouth charts and oral hygiene posters plaster the walls and Jack sees more than one encyclopedia on mammalian mouth structure lying around the room. Her bed is a massive four-poster with silken curtains and the bedding is covered in a feather-like pattern. Jack's beginning to notice a theme in this family: lots of teeth and lots of birds.

She tells him that he can sit wherever he wants, and as there is an entire one chair that is currently occupied by her school supplies, he perches rigidly on the edge of the bed.

Tooth now looks a bit nervous. "I feel like I should apologize for earlier today. I didn't mean to freak you out; I can understand why you wouldn't want anyone to know what you could do."

"I haven't even admitted to doing anything yet," Jack replies flatly. She gives him a _look_.

"You didn't have to admit it. I already know you did it. If you hadn't, why would you come here when I told you to?"

"Maybe I'm just curious," Jack says. Tooth shakes her head.

"Sorry Jack, but please cut out the denial. I wouldn't have invited you over if I wasn't certain you were like me."

"What do you mean _like you_, though?" Jack snaps, feeling his patience beginning to ebb. "What are you like? You're completely normal, sort of."

Tooth's perfect mouth twists into a cross between a tight smile and a grimace. "Actually, not really. Like you just said, I'm only sort of normal. Like you." She heaves out a sigh and Jack can detect a slight tremor. "I haven't showed anyone this before, you know," she tells him, reaching for the bottom hem of her sweater.

Jack's eyes widen. "Wait, what?"

She's taking her sweater off. Along with the colorful shirt underneath.

As I do not identify as any particular gender, I can't really imagine which side of this scenario is more awkward. There's Tooth's side, where she's taking her clothes off in front of a boy she's only just met to reveal a secret she hasn't told anyone else. And then there's Jack's side, where a girl he's only just met is taking her clothes off for a yet-undisclosed reason. Also they're alone in her room and he's sitting on her bed. He stammers something about needing to go and not being mentally prepared for this and jumps up, tripping over a low coffee table as he stumbles his way towards the door, but a pleading look from Tooth stops him in his tracks.

The sweater and shirt are off now, and she's standing in her skirt and a low-cut tank top that reveals most of her back. She turns around and something is resting, nestled between her shoulder blades. Tooth rolls her shoulders and the thing unfurls to reveal...

...Wings.

Toothiana Hy Loo has wings.

* * *

** A/N:**

** My apologies for not updating for two days straight. Sunday I was out of town (and therefore away from internet) visiting my sisters, and Monday I was just...lazy, really, and I wasn't exactly **_**feeling **_**this chapter, you know? Hence why it's shorter and sucked. Next one will be better, I swear. **

** Rashmi is Baby Tooth, in case anyone didn't catch that. The reason behind her name will be explained next chapter. She's deaf because in the movie the tooth fairies don't talk, and I kinda wanted to keep that aspect of her character. **

** (Only three chapters in and we're already at 100 reviews, ohmygOD. Thank you all so much. Shoutout to my wonderful little sister Luna Awesomesauce 1012 for being number 100.)**

** Till next time! Please keep reviewing!**


	5. Chapter 5

"Wha...what even..."

Jack takes a brief moment to reflect on just how strange his life has become in just a few short days. He constantly feels freezing cold, has ice spewing out his fingers, and now he's faced with an honest-to-God _fairy_. All in less than seventy-two hours.

He swallows a string of curses that would make his mom break out the soap and decides, hey, things can't possibly get any weirder. So he forces himself to not freak out and takes a closer look.

Strange as they are, Tooth's wings are rather beautiful. They don't look like insect wings or those belonging to a bird. They're more stereotypical fairy wings. More like flower petals than anything, really; their color is a pale, shimmering pink and thin, nearly invisible webs of veins stretch through them. Each 'petal', as it were, comes to a sharp point and they are joined seamlessly with her back in the space between her shoulder blades."

"Wow," Jack breathes, and he has to fight down an urge to touch one, because they actually look really soft and nice. So does Tooth's skin, now that he thinks about it, but then he banishes the thought. Now is not the time to think about things like that.

Heh, hormonal teenagers. Must be fun.

Actually no, I take that back, I do not want to be a hormonal teenager. That looks stressful.

Tooth turns to look at him and he can tell she had been standing with bated breath, awaiting his reaction. He still isn't entirely sure what to think at this point, but at least he's not freaking out. Sure, he had to physically restrain himself from doing just that, but now he's actually pretty calm. This whole situation remains insanely surreal, though, and begs more than a few questions.

"Why do you have wings?" being first and foremost.

Tooth sighs and pulls her shirt and sweater back on, carefully folding the wings around her body in such a way that odd folds and bulges wouldn't show through. It's a rather impressive arrangement. She should be a florist. After doing that she sits down on the bed and Jack hesitantly sits next to her.

"To be honest, I have no idea," she says softly. "It just sort of happened, you know?"

"Yeah, I know," Jack replies honestly.

She continues with, "I've been thinking about it for a while, ever since they showed up. I have one theory that seems kind of implausible, but it's all I've got."

She flops onto her back and stares upward, and it's a long moment before she slowly speaks again.

"My mom was in the air force when I was a kid," she says. "She came and went fromt the U.S., always being deployed somewhere else, right? She was brilliant, one of the best pilots in her corps."

Jack has a feeling this story does not have a happy ending.

"A few years ago, when Rashmi was just a baby and I was around ten or so, she was deployed in Afghanistan and her plane got shot down." Tooth's voice has a slight tremor now and Jack silently-and slightly shamefully-applauds himself for being so astute. "She's still listed as 'missing in action' but they never found her again, and we...we didn't really know what to do here without her. Tania came back from college for a while―Tien hadn't graduated yet―and Dad even changed Rashmi's name to be named after her. Mom, I mean. Rashmi was her name too. My little sister used to be called Thanh, actually.

"I had nightmares for a long time after my mom...you know. Of being up in the air and then falling and being unable save myself. I just kept going down until I hit the ground. I wished it would stop, that I'd find a way to keep myself from falling...and then last month, I grew wings."

"Why last month, though?" Jack can't help but interrupt. "I'm really sorry about your mom and all, but that was six or seven years ago, right? Why would you only _just now _get something that would help you not fall?"

"I have no idea," Tooth sighed, sitting up and running a hand through her hair. "I just think that my being afraid falling had something to do with it."

There's a long pause, then she says, "Your turn. You owe me an explanation now too, Jack Frost. Boy with the most hilariously ironic name ever."

"Shut up," he groans, then he briefly details that fateful day on the pond and the subsequent lead-up to his discovery of his powers.

"You're last month too, just like I thought," Tooth hummed. "Why?"

"Don't ask me," Jack shrugs. "It's strange though, isn't it?"

"What is?"

He shrugs again. "We both got things we sort of needed, right? You got wings so you wouldn't be afraid of falling and splattering on the ground―" Tooth flinches, and he feels bad and retracts his statement― "And I got some nutty resistance to cold after I almost died in a frozen pond in winter."

"That's a good point," she concedes. "In your case the timing makes sense though. You needed those powers right away, or you wouldn't survive. I could have gotten them six years ago, so why did they only pop up now?"

They fall into silence again as they ponder the newest question.

"Can you fly?" Jack asks when the stillness becomes too much to bear and he feels a need to reboot the conversation. It wouldn't surprise him if she could.

Tooth blinks, looking confused, before sheepishly admitting that she hadn't actually tried yet. Jack is actually surprised by that.

* * *

A trip onto the roof and two boxes of bloody Kleenex later it is determined that no, Tooth cannot actually fly.

Jack tells her he's seen chickens that could fly further than she can jump and then has to dodge her elbow to avoid getting bloodied up himself.

He does have to admit she's pretty tough, though. Anyone else who jumped from that height would probably be dead.

* * *

"And the thing is," Tooth says, her voice nasally from having one nostril still clogged up with tissue, "is that the wings aren't even the only thing that happened to me."

Jack chokes. "Wait, _what_?" After the wings and all that talking and speculation and you jumping off your friggin' roof, you're telling me there's more?!"

"Yep," is her response, and he's a little irked that she doesn't sound ashamed of herself in the slightest. "I was in the 7-11 when I found out this one."

Two powers. She gets two. It doesn't even matter what kind of power the second one is, this girl needs a limit.

"So what is it?" Jack asks warily.

So as Tooth tells it, she can speak and understand any language. Jack wonders how she found this out in a 7-11. Apparently there's lots of racial diversity in a 7-11, and she listened in on both a Spanish and Norwegian family arguing over what kind of donuts to buy.

Jack tactfully asks her to prove it.

"Ich kann Deutsch sprechen. Ich kann Deutsch nicht gesprochen."

"What."

"Nihongo wo hanaseru yo. Yo hablo Español. Wŏ huì shuō zhōng wén." She continues on with presumably the same sentence in a variety of other languages, ranging from a few that sound like Russian and Portuguese to one or two he can't even identify.

"Uh, Tooth, what was that last one?"

"Biblical Greek, Jack! That was biblical Greek!" She clutches at her hair and it's kind of interesting how she thinks that suddenly being able to speak Japanese and German and biblical Greek is freakier than wings suddenly sprouting out of her back.

The two of them try think of an explanation as to why she can talk like every foreigner ever (according to Tooth, she was fluent in Hindi and Vietnamese anyway thanks to her heritage) but they can't think of anything in the end. One of them throws out the theory that she speaks every language because Rashmi can speak none, but it's quickly discarded.

Back at school the next day they sit together at lunch, lounging in one of the side stairwells. Over the next few days they develop a sort of pattern and Jack thinks, slightly curiously, that this must be how it feels to have an actual friend. They don't understand any more about their abilities than they did when they first met, but it's nice to know they aren't alone. She even opines that there might be other people like them around.

* * *

Rosie heckles Jack about having a girlfriend for the rest of the week, even getting their parents intrigued. He hides all of her socks in return.

* * *

Tooth manages to find another person with weird powers by Friday.

Of course she does.

* * *

** A/N:**

** Guuuyyyyysss. Only seventeen reviews last chapter. Of course I appreciate them, but I need them more than usual D: I have a competitive spirit and others in the contest are beginning to catch up. This is my fault mostly, because I accidentally stopped with daily updates, but I'm trying to get back on track! Please help me!**

** The sentences in languages other than English should be fairly accurate. I had reliable sources that weren't an online translater. (The Chinese and Japanese came from Boba Addict, who speaks both, the Spanish is from my Spanish-learning sister, and I'm learning German myself so I know that much at least.)**

** Thank you for reading! **_**Please**_ **review!**


	6. Chapter 6

The first impression Jack has of Nicholas St. North, or just North, as he introduces himself, is that he's _massive_. Six-foot-four, at the least, with dark brown hair and baby blue eyes. He also has quite a bit of weight on him that is probably more muscle than actual fat, and there's stubble lining his jaw. Tooth introduces him and Jack at lunch Friday, and Jack doubts he's ever felt more intimidated in his life, not even when he saw the ice cracking under Rosie's feet last month. That is certainly saying something.

The first thing Jack actually _learns _about North is that he's a senior and an exchange student from Russia. The second is that he has some kind of super strength.

"He ripped my locker door off its hinges!" Tooth informs Jack, as though large men mutilating school property was every girl's dream come true. She does seem overly delighted at this turn of events. "It broke in half!"

"It vas stuck," North says through a thick accent, "and vould not open."

Though he looks like the kind of guy who would eat a bowl of vodka and steel nails for breakfast, North's voice does have a sort of wise, soothing rumble to it, and he actually looks a bit embarrassed by the fact that he's deprived Tooth of her locker. Tooth herself is holding all her school equipment in her arms. Apparently she has never invested in a backpack or bookbag before.

"Jack's the one I told you about," she tells the large Russian. "The one who can freeze things."

"Whoa, hey, I thought we agreed to keep that stuff to ourselves," Jack interjects, startled, because they _had _agreed on that two days ago.

Tooth twiddles her thumbs. "I knooow, but North was okay to tell because he's like us!"

Jack sighs and rubs his eyes. "How can you even know that?"

"Because all he tried to do was unstick my locker door and now that's lying in pieces in a trash can on the third floor. Come ooon Jack, believe in me for once."

Jack stares at North. North stares back.

"Is she making any of this up?"

"No. You can take my vord for it."

"...Fine."

* * *

They go outside to a remote part of the campus and North demonstrates his super strength by throwing a full dumpster twenty yards. He then sheepishly puts it back where he found it and Jack considers himself convinced.

* * *

North actually does have a lot to contribute to the conversation in terms of their powers. He invites Jack and Tooth over to the house he's staying at for the year to discuss it all. Both of them have to watch over their younger siblings for the day, so both Rosie and Rashmi tag along.

The two children actually get along well despite their three-year age difference, and even though Rashmi has agreed to wear her hearing aids for once she cheerfully offers to teach Rosie sign language. Rosie picks up on it impressively quickly and the two of them converse in signs all throughout the long drive to North's exchange home.

North drives like a maniac over the rugged terrain, but they arrive in one piece eventually. He lives with an old man and his twelve-year-old granddaughter, named Ombric and Katherine Shalazar respectively, in a large wooden house within the Burgess woods. Katherine, a small grey-eyed girl, greets them at the door and is perfectly willing to spend time with Rosie and Rashmi while the teenagers are discussing "school stuff".

"So North, what's your story?" Tooth asks excitedly before clarifying, "I mean, both Jack and I got our powers because we sorta needed them, right?

They quickly explain their theory in more detail when the Russian looks confused, and his look clears up after hearing it.

"I see," he nods. He then proceeds wax lyrical about a traumatic car accident he was in when he was eight, reminiscing about being pinned beneath the wreckage and wishing he were strong enough to get himself out. Seeing as North's had no reason to wish for super strength at any other point in his life, they all agree that that's the most likely reason for his gift.

"Still begs the question as to why all this stuff started happening last month, though," Tooth points out. "Something had to have happened."

"If something happened last month to make us get these powers, then perhaps something will happen in the future that would cause us to need to use them," North muses.

Jack thinks back to the way he got his. A situation dire enough make him actually have to use his Touch of Death didn't sound fun. "God, I hope not."

Never mind the unsubtle foreshadowing in the prior two sentences. As stated before, North does have a lot to contribute to the group. I'm glad Jack and Tooth managed to find someone who actually takes the initiative when it comes to figuring things out, because neither of them are very proactive. Let's just face that now.

North opines that Tooth can't fly specifically because she never tried, and says he could help her practice to get stronger. Tooth is a little hesitant to go jumping off roofs again, considering last time, and she throws Jack a wary glare like it was his suggestion the second time before hesitantly accepting North's offer. It's actually not too bad once they get outside. The Shalazar home is only two stories high as opposed to the Hy Loo mansion, and it has the added bonus of being surrounded by cushioning foliage. Tooth eventually feels comfortable enough to jump off the roof and into North's arms, and after practicing, she's at least able to move her wings in a manner imitating flight.

"We'll work more on it later," North says when the sun begins to go down and they're forced to stop their practice. She agrees. Jack says nothing, having spent the past several hours feeling up trees to see if he can do more than frost up their trunks. He cannot.

Jesus Christ Frosty, you're going to be some heavy baggage on the rest of this makeshift team if you don't get it together. I might have to rename you Tyrone. Get it together, Tyrone.

* * *

The rest of the week is rather peaceful. Tooth makes progress on strengthening her wings, North doesn't break anything, and Frosty Tyrone doesn't make any progress at all. I'm starting to think his main purpose in life is to just be an instant ice-cube maker.

(Tooth actually does use him for that once. He's not amused.)

Rosie and Rashmi became best friends or something and are quite attached to Katherine as well, so that at least gives the teenagers an excuse to meet up at North's house often. All in all, nothing else strange happens for the next few days.

That is, until some ferrety Australian named E. Aster Bunnymund shows up.

* * *

** A/N:**

** This is so late, ugh. It's not even that good. I've been feeling spectacularly un-funny lately, and that puts a damper on the writing process here. **

** Anyway. Now that the cast is growing, I'm going to start throwing in references to other series and fandoms. It won't be a crossover with anything, exactly, because all the cameos will just be side-characters of varying importance. (I'm going to get rid of the Adventure Time reference in chapter 1 because some characters from AT are going to show up and I can't have anything that meta. Shhh, don't mention it.)**

** Thanks for reading, even this chapter is short and rather crap. Please review, as always!**


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